You CAN get banned for off-fourm stuff. Slackergate proved that much. And actually, I don't mind it so much, as long as the off-forum activity directly affects the JC's safety or well-being. It only makes sense. I mean, let's say they found out a member was planning to cause mass havoc on the JC. Would it better to sit and wait, or pre-emtively stop them?

No, he was banned for stuff he did here, not for what he did over there. See, what he did to Wattowatta's board had no direct effect on the JC. On a MEMBER of the JC, yes. But not on the JC as a whole.

If something occurs off the forum but its an action that may pertain to a problem or a potential problem on the boards (excluding, imo, whatever judgements on a members personality may be made) then I would call that forum-related since it is a threat to the board.

E.g. plotting to spamm the board. Pre-emptive action should be taken in this cause, since it directly involves the forum.

If, however, a member does something not related to the forum but which reflects upon their personailty, I dont belive this should be given any weight against a member since it is *not* related to the board except in an indirect way and any decision take would involve a judgement made of their personality regardless of actions taken within the forum.

E.g. a person is beleived to have a criminal record. This should not reflect upon their posting rights since it requires an admin to make a judgement on their personality, one which may well be made on nothing more than rumours and the member shouldnt be forced to disclose that kind of information.

Thats just my view on things

(examples are NOT based on any particular members or their situations and we're thought up randomly)

Not sure about the details since I don't spend much time in community, but apparently a group of members called the "slackers" were discovered to be planning to register fake names and cause trouble. Though they didn't say anything about it here, communicating through a chat room instead, action was taken and a few were banned. I may be missing major details, or information that came to light later on, so don't take my word for it.

The Slackers were spied upon in their chatrooms, and their conversations logged. From those conversations, in the context of an actual (minor) hack against a related site, it was believed that the Slackers were planning to hack the JC. This excuse was used to delete the Slackers' major threads on the JC and, later, to ban a few usernames. (These bans were later revoked.) Posting of the AF logs on the JC later revealed that the underlying reason for action was that of undesirability of the Slackers' chat threads.

The hacking threat was later shown to be completely spurious, and three administrators among all those involved openly apologised (Paul, Chyren, Ytap). (Those most central to creating a context within which a threat might be seen, never did.)